Starting with extensive keyword research allows you to evaluate a number of opportunities and determine which keywords truly have the potential to drive profits for your business.

However, evaluating and refining your keywords will be a lengthy and tedious process if you don't first impose a meaningful order on your keyword research. So the next step is to segment your keywords into small, tightly related groups. Grouping your keywords will change everything else you do in search for the better. Here are just a few of the benefits of better keyword grouping and organization:

The ability to efficiently target a group of related keywords with a single Web page

More manageable research

An outline for an SEO-friendly information architecture (or site structure)

Breaking a large keyword list down into groups can be daunting, if you're not sure where to start. Here are three tips to help you organize your research:

Start with large, high-level groups. Strong candidates for top-level keyword groups are broad terms corresponding to an offering provided by your business, be it a product or service. A top-level group is usually one word—a noun—such as "cake" or "contracting."

Next, segment your top-level groups into narrower subgroups. Second-level groups often include a modifier that specifies the offering in question—for example, "birthday cakes" or "chocolate cake."

Keyword grouping tools, like our free Keyword Grouper and Keyword Niche Finder, can make quick work of what would otherwise be a cumbersome manual process. You can export your groups in a .csv file for further tweaking.

In the next step of our guide, you'll learn how to exploit your keyword group structure to prioritize PPC and SEO content creation—so you can start seeing returns on your work!